"Thorsten Behrens" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
Phil Hibbs wrote:
Harold Fuchs:
> So, am I being
> paranoid in thinking that the choice of the name "LibreOffice" suggests
> that
> at some stage it will no longer be Gratis?
Yup.
Totally not - it being LGPLv3 licensed will lead to its source code
being freely available eternally - and transitively, since the
marginal cost of supplying binaries to users approaches zero (with
some purported 100 million users of OOo), that also holds for the
final product.
(besides that, the notion of "gratis" is misleading at best - of
course there's inherent cost in every software, FLOSS being no
exception - and of course someone needs to develop it, test it,
translate it, etc - either by donating time, or money)
Cheers,
-- Thorsten
First, I think you mean "totally yes", in other words I think you think I'm
being paranoid. Please correct me if I've got this wrong.
Second, the fact that the source code will be freely available forever is of
no interest to 99% of the users of the software who wouldn't know what to do
with a single line of c++ or Java let alone several million. Those users
need a supported product, either supported by a professional organisation or
by a volunteer group like the existing OOo forums & mail-lists.
The foundation could decide to sell LibreOffice in the same way Sun sold
StarOffice. The name LibreOffice suggests this might be the plan. However,
subsequent messages in other threads tell us that the foundation is hoping
that Oracle will join it and donate the name OpenOffice.org, at which point
the name LibreOffice will be dropped. So perhaps I was being paranoid after
all. I hope so.
--
Harold Fuchs
London, England
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